Emotional Disorder among Offenders

Abstract

The prevalence of serious emotional disorder, as measured by a structured diagnostic interview, was found to range between 7% and 10% in groups of state, federal, and military prison inmates. Seriously disturbed offenders sampled from a military prison population (N=51) were found to be younger, better educated, less criminally sophisticated, and more likely to satisfy criteria indicative of a primary affective disorder than an emotionally disturbed state (N=54) and federal (N=52) inmates. State inmates, on the other hand, evidenced higher levels of schizophrenic psychopathology than prisoners in the other two conditions. Despite a relatively large number of significant demographic, background, and diagnostic differences among these three groups, the MMPI results for state, federal, and military offenders with serious emotional problems were nearly identical. In addition, all three groups of emotionally disturbed inmates displayed much poorer institutional adjustment relative to their counterparts in each of the respective general populations.